Sunday, June 14, 2015

Knuckle Sammiches with a Side of Faith

Hey hey hey,

My week’s been a pretty weird one.

I Love the Bronx?

Elder Wallace and I went and looked up a less active member of the ward.
He is an older Jamaican man. Cool fella. He has a lot of health problems that
prevent him from coming to church. At one point he was talking about how he has
been gaining weight. To show us all the weight he has gained this old Jamaican
man started lifting up his shirt and fondled his bare belly in abnormal ways.
Who does that? That def made my top ten of weirdest things I've seen this
week.

This sketchy dentist's office is right down the street from where we live.Why in the world would you go to a sketchy dentist office when there is a hearse parked out front???

We had a drunk guy wobble up to us on the street call us a couple of
highly explicit things and tell us he was going to knock us out haha. It was
pretty funny considering I could have blown in his face and he would've tipped
over. We starting walking away and he tried following us. Every time he would
call us a terrible name we would keep telling him thank you. It made him even
more mad and he wanted to give us a knuckle sammich even more but he couldn't
keep up with our fast paced walking. The people I get to meet out here haha.

Elder Wallace and I saw a miracle this morning. We were doing our
laundry in the basement of our apartment complex. We still have to pay just as
much money as we would if we were going to a laundromat, but hey at least it's
close to home. We washed our clothes and then we went to move them into the
dryer. There's two dryers in the basement of our apartment. One doesn't work
and has never worked since I've been here, and the other is sketchy with how
often it works. We moved all of our goodies into the dryer, put our quarters in
the dryer slot, and the dealio that you slide in with all of our quarters in it
got jammed. We couldn't get that homeboy to budge! If we didn't get our clothes
to dry in that dryer it would have botched our p-day. My faithful companion
suggested that we say a prayer. Ladies and gents, doods and doodettes sometimes
in life we feel that we can't pray about certain things because we aren't
worthy/not full of enough faith/we don't think God will answer our prayer. That
thought is from the adversary. We should never entertain such a thought. With
that in mind we prayed. We expressed to God how we wanted to do the best we
could to keep our covenants that we had both previously made with Him in a holy
place, but it would be a hard thing to do if our covenants were soaking wet.
After our prayer and us pushing and pounding on the dryer for a couple of
minutes the dryer started working! And I kid you not, this was the driest our
clothes have ever been. Usually the dryer is kind of wimpy and leaves our
clothes a lil bit damp, but this time they were as dry as my companions chicken
that he cooks. It was marvelous. Is God real or what??? #WowzaGeeBoomBoomPowDropTheBassSkrrrrrt

Something I've been wanting to know lately is how I can have more faith.
In order to be a bigger TOOL (in the hands of the Lord) and have miracles occur
you have to first demonstrate your faith. I was able to get a cool email this
last week from President Morgan that answers that question of, "How can we
have more faith?"

-"How do we increase our faith?” Elder Bruce R. McConkie taught:
“Faith is a gift of God bestowed as a reward for personal righteousness. It is
always given when righteousness is present, and the greater the measure of
obedience to God’s laws the greater will be the endowment of faith”.

If we desire more faith and the power which comes with it, we must be
more obedient. When we allow ourselves to be casual or situational in obeying
God's commandments, we prevent ourselves from fully receiving the vital
spiritual gift of faith. Increased faith requires an attitude of exact
obedience, even in our small, simple behaviors. Faith, as a principle of power,
comes from a consistent pattern of obedient behaviors and attitudes. As
representatives of the Savior, let's deny the adversaries attempts to create
doubt, discouragement and distraction by increasing our faith in Jesus Christ
through our obedience and love for Him." -President Morgan

I can't really say it better than that. Sooooo just read that and I'm
sure you'll be good.